Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday March 17, 2011 @03:31PM
from the can't-resist-the-smiley-face dept.

60-year-old John Jacques has appealed his conviction for engaging in sexually graphic online conversations with a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl, saying the police entrapped him using animated emoticons during the chats. From the article: "Jacques claims prosecutors withheld evidence when they failed to use a computer program that would have shown the jury animated emoticons, which he argued was 'clear evidence of enticement.' He doesn't support his argument with a legal basis, the appeals court found. 'We fail to see how viewing the emoticons as animations would have led the jury to conclude that he was the victim of excessive incitement,' the court wrote."

If you have a sexually explicit conversation with a consenting adult who is pretending to be a child, that is illegal (because of your intent).If you have a sexually explicit conversation with a child who is pretending to be an adult, that is also illegal (because of the act).

So basically, any sexually explicit conversations online could ruin your life, because you simply don't know who you are talking to.

Laws of intent seem rather dubious to me simply because one can craft any intention out of anything innocent.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -Cardinal Richelieu [wikipedia.org] (disputed tho)

The point of this quote is that authoritarian figures can simply take anything you do or say and make a crime out of it with intent:

You bought a gun. Well, maybe you are planning to kill a politician with it?

You have a chemistry set in your house. Well, maybe you were planning to make drugs with it?

You have encryption on your computer. Well, maybe you were planning on hiding illegal activity?

See where I'm going with this. It is simply your word against theirs. No one can read your mind to see if you are telling the truth, so they are simply accusing you of something that you haven't done but could possibly do. How can you defend against that?

Crimes should be things that actually happened after the fact or in progress. Yes the cops should stop a person who is trying to commit a crime and yes they should prosecute them for the action itself, but if you can convict a person on the intent to commit a crime are basically condemning the good majority of citizens who would never in their life commit such a crime.

See where I'm going with this. It is simply your word against theirs. No one can read your mind to see if you are telling the truth, so they are simply accusing you of something that you haven't done but could possibly do. How can you defend against that?

You make it sound as though the police simply pick people up at random, accuse them of unprovable crimes and get them jailed. It's a bit more complicated than that, they still have to prove in court that you are guilty of something. If you have enough evidence that someone was genuinely intending to abuse children, I say it's a good thing you catch them in advance.

The fact that some places in the US appear to have stupid laws branding you as a sex offender because you took a piss in an alley is a differe

The law in many states as it relates to sexual offenses are very, very broken. For example, simply peeing in public, in some states, is enough to have you arrested and classified as a sexual predator.

Basically, many states require checkins and public notification for people moving into your neighborhood because they had to pee. This is a great example of how stupid and seemingly corrupt cops and courts can be.

Except there's a HUGE difference between a 13 year old going after an adult and willingly initiating sex and an adult coercing a 13 year old into sex. It scares me that you lack the ability to understand the difference in the situations.

Your claim is analogous to saying that because a guy meets a girl at a bar and she says "Want to go to my place and have sex?" and he agrees, that he's dangerous because he might go out find a random girl and rape her.

This kind of police activity is quite literally "thought crime" since no actual crime had been committed. Is it good that guys like him aren't out there *possibly* victimizing real people? Probably, sure. But does it warrant locking him up? Probably not. IMO they should use stings like this merely to flag and monitor people so that if they do try and take action, THEN you arrest them. What they're doing isn't any different from going after people who get off

Good luck with that. You should also tell them how the mean and tricksy the police are for saying "Hey, I'm a 13-year-old girl" when they -really weren't-. Gasp. You were suckered right into soliciting sexually graphic conversations, they practically haxxored your Gibson with such coercion like "Hey, I'm a kid" and "I think Spongebob is great."

Lets take the kid out of the equation and substitute something else that is often sensationalized - gun buying.

Mayor Bloomberg of NYC hired some folks in Arizona to go to a gunshow and purchase arms from private individuals. Nothing in Arizona law prevents person to person transfers, and Fed law only requires that both parties be residents of the same state and the transaction take place in that state. So legal for a non-Felon Arizona citizen to buy/sell to/from another non-Felon.

Someday a defense lawyer will be able to prove that almost all the "kids hot for sex" on the Internet are not kids.

At that point he'll be able to credibly claim that his client's goal was to see the look on an adult's face when another adult showed up pretending to be interested in sex with a kid.

Once about 80-90% of "horny kids" online are not kids, judges will have no choice but to admit this into evidence and REQUIRE that the prosecution prove that the defendant is lying and that the defendant really did expect a kid to be there.

This will be especially true in cases where the defendant ONLY chatted up the policeman-pretending-to-be-a-kid and said he was coming over for sex but never showed. In a world where 80-90% of "online horny kids" are adults, NOT showing up is strong evidence that you were in it for the lulz rather than sex.

What I expect to happen a lot sooner:

Some edgy newspaper will, with the approval of their lawyers, go online and hit up "kids" online and then report each and every kid to the local family protective service authority or local cops. The local cops will have to take the time to double-check with the feds and state cops to make sure it's not a sting, chewing up valuable tax dollars in the process. Sooner or later there will be a mis-communication and family protective services or the local cops will "bust" an FBI agent.

I wonder how soon before we cross that 80-90% threshold, if we haven't done so already. I hope someday the "pretend" rate gets to 100%, because that will mean there are 0 horny kids out there chatting up adults for sex in Internet chat rooms.

Um, no. Back in the 90's when I was still a teen myself, I met about a dozen of my girlfriends through IRC or ICQ. All of them were in the 14-17 range. Not a single one of them ever turned out to be an adult posing as a teen. I dunno how these guys manage to keep getting busted - even if the number of cops posing online has gone up by a couple orders of magnitude, so has the number of kids with internet connections. It's probably the same as with most other laws - the dumb criminals get caught quickly,

You raise a good point. A girl traveled almost 1,200 miles to visit me. High five?

Definitely high five. I never had something like that. But about the time I was 17, I went on a road-trip to Florida and met up with a bunch of them along the way:) Apparently the phrase "we may never get this chance again" is a heck of an aphrodisiac. Best trip of my life!

Is it illegal to be a kid and pretend to be an adult and invite a '13 year old cop' to have sex with you? Because that could be a form of civil disobedience or police denial of service (PDOS?) as well.

Those programs that replace text emotions with little symbol are annoying. I'm a furry. We often use our own variations, like:>. How are those of us with beaks supposed to emote when the programs only support human-based faces?

It matters because it would be entrapment. Even if you agree to rape a buss-load of nuns, murder a whole orphanage, and buy alcohol on a sunday, you can get off scott-free if you can show that cops goaded you into doing it. When it comes to these pedophile investigations, that means that the perp always has to suggest the actual act - the cop has to act pretty much completely innocent.

Police arrested Jacques Nov. 29, 2007, at a fast-food restaurant after arranging to meet the girl there for a sleepover. He engaged in sexually graphic conversations and sent a pornographic video and pictures to the police officer posing as the 13-year-old girl.

Not so bad? I dunno. I think that it would be far better if it were illegal to have such a conversation (and sending porn) with someone underage (provided they could prove you knew) than this. I mean the only victim I can see here is the offender of a police trap. If he actually contacted a minor sure, but what's illegal here? It's like possible intent to harm a minor probably if a minor was actually involved.

Kinda, kinda not. It really depends. I don't think there's any inherent harm in a boy seeing a boob, but realistically I think it does do some damage in that at that young with the hormones raging, you are looking at possible social damage. IE, kid starts looking at lots of porn instead of going out and trying to look at real boobies the old fashioned way.

Once upon a time it was common knowledge amongst young boys that those boobies they wanted to see so badly were to be found on roughly 50% of their pee

I don't know what the law is in the US but, given that we here in England seem to get most of our laws from you second-hand it's probably the same as here. It's a criminal offense called "Grooming" - or "Intent to solicit a minor to carry out a sexual act" (may not be the exact wording though). Would you say it was OK and shouldn't be a criminal offense if it was a 60-year old pervert sending your 13-year old daughter pornographic videos and telling her all the things he wanted to do to her?

60-year-old John Jacques has appealed his conviction for engaging in sexually graphic online conversations with a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl

Explicit conversations with people under 18 are illegal? And can get you on the sex offender list?

Am I the only one who sees that as rather ridiculous?

What I don't get is if two consenting adults have the same conversation with one telling the other (he/she) is under 18, and it is not a sting like this, is that a crime for either one or the other or both?

What if two adults tell each other they are both under 13 and have said conversation?What if they roleplay, same conversation, knowing the correct ages?Same conversation with a child CLAIMING (he/she) is an older age?

I don't get why "I knew you were not under 18 because you did XYZ in the chatroom" is not

This defense is like saying "She got me horny, then said she was 14. Then after repeatedly asking me to do it, and humping the air, I did it anyway". Nice tale, you still made the decision to have sex with a child. You lose, and you need help. The only defense you get is if you never actually touched a child. This being the case, you should get help. If, however, you did not just talk about these things, the other inmates will take care of you just right.

An important difference is that the girl in the story is 13. In your example she's 14, which is legal in a few states (I don't know of any state that goes lower than 14 though). All a cultural thing. Depending on the country you're in it could be much lower. I believe it's 12 many parts of Mexico for example.

Yes, this guy is probably guilty and belongs behind bars. No, it probably wouldn't make a difference to show animated emoticons. But that's not the point. The point is that he was convicted by a jury of his peers when that jury was shown evidence that differed from what was actually the case. In essence, the evidence was tampered with. It shouldn't be up to a judge to decide if that is a material difference, it should be up to the jury to decide. They were deprived of that choice, and all judgements that followed from that point on should be considered null and void.

Yeah, it will cost the taxpayer money to have a retrial. But that money is worth it to ensure the integrity of the justice system. If you care so much, take it out of the salary of the person that fucked up the evidence.

On a side note, I think it's pretty despicable that this was filed under "idle", as if we are supposed to point and laugh at the stupid defence. This goes right to the heart of how we are supposed to enact justice, it's not a laughing matter. I'd rather the guy went free than we jailed him on the basis of faulty evidence. The moment we decide it's okay to skip due process when we're "sure" of guilt, we give up the foundation of modern justice and undo centuries of civilisation.

Yes, this guy is probably guilty and belongs behind bars. No, it probably wouldn't make a difference to show animated emoticons. But that's not the point. The point is that he was convicted by a jury of his peers when that jury was shown evidence that differed from what was actually the case. In essence, the evidence was tampered with. It shouldn't be up to a judge to decide if that is a material difference, it should be up to the jury to decide. They were deprived of that choice, and all judgements that followed from that point on should be considered null and void.

Actually, the judge gets to decide what evidence is relevant and admissable to begin with. So also, judges get to decide whether overlooked/suppressed/incorrect evidence could possibly be sufficient to change a verdict. Nothing inherently wrong with that--while I personally think great care should be taken to give the defendant the benefit of any doubt, some mistakes are just obviously too minor to have had any influence on the jury...

Well, gee, I hope they get the font right next time. And make sure its the same tone of magenta as he uses on his chat program. And get a monitor calibrated to match the settings of his own. In fact, the whole jury should have to dogpile onto his chair in front of his computer, in his house, just so it matches the evidence precisely.

Unless the animated emoticon said, "I....AM....REALLY....A....POLICE....OFFICER....AND....I....WANT....TO.....MEET....YOU....FOR....SEX....AND....WATCH....YOUR....PORN", there is nothing in that claim that would have kept him from sending porn to and arranging to have sex with what he thought was a 13 year-old girl.

This was not a miscarriage of justice, and was not taking shortcuts with the law. Even if we accept that this was one I that wasn't dotted, or one T that wasn't crossed, there is no way that it

If those icons were animated, it's because he put them there himself. Go ahead, name a chat client that sends and receives actual graphical animated emoticons. I'll wait right here.

Done looking? Didn't find one, did you? That's because they're all stored locally as themes. He either picked the theme, created his own, installed a theme, or it was the default theme. The police did not send him any animated icons.

There is always a balance between ensuring citizens have due process, and also due justice.

Call me crazy, but I'd take due process over due justice any day. I'm not comfortable with there being any balance between the two at all. I'd imagine I'd feel that way all the more strongly if I ever wound up in court. Injustice is always wrong, and it's not something I ever want to see our government involved in. Even if it's in the name of "justice".

You've already made an error in assuming they would "figure it out" to begin with. Most of them are mentally ill, are essentially incapable of "figuring that out", or are unable to recognize they are even harming someone. Harsher prison sentences or abuse from other inmates will never solve the problem.

What they need is treatment, and the security to be able to get treatment without fear of reprisal from other people so they can work on their problems before they hurt someone. Ignorance and failure to accept that simple fact and calls for harsher penalties from the "tough on crime" crowd will never solve the issue, but it will simply make pedophiles keep their mouths shut, avoid treatment, and ultimately hurt someone, further destroying their life and causing abuse for their victim.

Err, no, a child can actually be killed by that act, and the resulting bleed-out. But so often these stories are about physically mature girls (yet far from the age of consent), where your argument becomes a cultural one. At least from your sig I can conclude you're not from the "soft on crime" crowd.

The thing is, you don't need to "demonize" sex to feel that it's best left to a more emotionally mature age, any more than you need to demonize driving a car to suggest it's left until a more emotionally matur

... if he didn't get nailed by "a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl" . . . he would probably be hitting on a real 13-year-old girl . . . claiming that he was 14. Sorry, Jacques, "No sympathy (or soup) for you!"

I don't know how many times I've heard people talk about how "The cops offered him xxx, it was entrapment!" IANAL, but my understanding is that entrapment requires duress of some kind (cop tells you to go buy drugs or he'll break your legs, and then arrests you for buying drugs) or overt trickery where you lack any intent (cop sells you a toaster filled with drugs even though you genuinely thought you were just buying a toaster). Merely offering something comes nowhere near the legal baseline for entrapme

No that isn't just entrapment. Entrapment is meant to protect from police soliciting people into illegal things that they did not initiate, and conceivably would not have without the cop inviting them.

Take the following example. A really hot female undercover police officer walking down the street on the Vegas strip, stops random guys that look drunk and offers them sexual favors if they cover her bar tab.

Take the following example. A really hot female undercover police officer walking down the street on the Vegas strip, stops random guys that look drunk and offers them sexual favors if they cover her bar tab.

That one probably wouldn't be illegal either way. It's not a direct exchange of money - it's essentially exchanging a gift for sex. That really isn't illegal (hell the entire Valentine's Day holiday is more or less BUILT on that idea).

Prostitution laws are one of those oddities where the action is legal is just about every single way except a direct handover of cash. Two friends who are just bored can do it - no problem. Women do it for drinks at the bar no problem. Every Valentine's Day it gets trade

Roughly, yes. More specifically, entrapment is something that induces someone to commit a crime that he would not have otherwise. Pretending to be a 13-year old online in order to attract old perverts who are looking for 13-year-olds is not entrapment.

(Important precedent was established in the DeLorean case. DeLorean was told there were investors interested in his troubled car company. As soon as the undercover feds mentioned drugs he started trying to back out. They threatened his family. He dealt. They arrested. He spent a long time and a lot of money at his trial to force them to produce the unedited video of that meeting.)

You are completely mistaken. An classic example of entrapment is this: A police officer posing as a prostitute tells someone that they will have sex with them for $X. This is why when police pose as a prostitute they always wait for the "John" to bring up money. The same is true when a police officer poses as a "John", the officer will wait for the prostitute to bring up money.

I don't understand why they don't think a 13-year-old won't start lying and saying they're 18-years-old when they want to have explicit conversations with strangers on the internet. Also, I thought chat programs were supposed to disallow all people who are 13-years-old from entering explicit rooms. Shouldn't there be reasonable expectation that if somebody identifies themselves as 13 in a chatroom mean they're just trying to engage in virtual ageplay because they've already told the chat protocol they are

He sent what he believed to be a 13 year old girl pictures of his junk and then arranged to meet her at a fast food joint for a "sleep over". The whole "using a computer" bit is just clarification. The guy was trying to diddle a 13 year old. I have zero sympathy.

IANAL but I've always questioned the core illegality of being caught in a sting that isn't *really* illegal. By that I mean, he wasn't really engaging in a conversation with a 13 year old. All he actually did was talk dirty to an adult. Same with drug busts with fake cocaine or whatever. Have I truly committed a crime if I exchange a suitcase full of cash for bags of sugar?

Another problem I have is who these guys are catching. I watched a lot of To Catch a Predator and, while some guys seemed like Pred

Are you a cop? You have to tell me if you're a cop. Anyway, your emoticon clearly indicates you want some LSD. I know a guy. Let me know. Again, are you a cop? You have to tell me if you're a cop. You're a cop aren't you?

The character was trying to sell LSD, over slashdot, based on a single emoticon: there would have been multiple mistakes this ficticious character made before getting to the point of assuming cops couldn't lie about being a cop.

I never got how this was supposed to work. It's held against you if you lie to a cop, but they can lie to you with impunity. It seems like a recipe for abuse. The cops are free to trick people into making self-incriminating remarks, even though people supposedly have the right not to self-incriminate. There's really no difference between being manipulated into making a confession (they tricked you), and being cohered into it (they threatened you). This is a loophole in the 5th amendment that has essentially rendered it ineffective.

Then you get labeled non-cooperative and your silence is used against you.

That's what they want you to believe, at least.

It's one of the tricks they use to get people to talk themselves into confessing, even to things they haven't done. Watch any episode of Law and Order and watch how frustrated the detectives get when their suspects clam up.

The only thing you should say to them is that you will not talk to them without your lawyer.

Some people are just hilariously naive, like everyone who was quoting the Internet Privacy Act [wikipedia.org] that didn't exist. Hell, even people I talked to that knew it didn't exist seemed to think a cop would read that and go "Oh, I guess I'm not allowed to be here" and disconnect.

Then again, sometimes the law IS that stupid which is why most any big corporation have this huge legal blurb to their outgoing email. Because if you didn't say it's only for the intended recipient, then you might believe it's for the uninte

You know, as much as I hate kiddie pervs having to actually deal with the cops when running an IRC chat room during the 90s I can say if my experience is typical (and I have no reason to feel it isn't) then entrapment is SOP among the cops when it comes to this crap. My example:

My boss at the time let me run an IRC chat to keep me from being bored between fixes at the shop so I set up A Windows repair chat which was VERY clearly marked as such, had strict rules on the layout of posts (name of OS, brief description of problem, be ready to follow instructions given, etc) when this poster comes on claiming to be a 15 year old girl comes on and start seriously hitting on everyone there. I tell them I"I don't know where you think you are but this a Windows repair site for people that are having serious computer issues, not a sex site. If you're not having PC problems please find another site."

Well after this the "girl" starts targeting me directly, one filthy suggestion after another, offering to send dirty pics of herself and asking for pics of me, etc. Meanwhile I'm dealing with a 28 year old mother of two that is practically in tears because the used PC she picked up for her family is BSODing about every 4 minutes like clockwork (turned out to be a bad graphics driver install) causing her to lose connection and having to have her son hook her back up so I have NO time for this shit and after being interrupted for the dozenth time by the little slut I just said "Look kid, I frankly don't give a shit WHAT you look like, A I have a nice woman I'm quite happy with, B, I don't date women more than 4 years younger than me, and C This is a fucking repair site not a dating site so get lost already!"

So the screen goes silent and I manage to get the freaked out mom fixed and then up pops for the 15 year old "I'm Sgt Maria whatever of the AZ polic dept. I just wanted to say you are the only one who has failed to take my bait and its nice to know there are still guys out there that aren't pervs". Well then I promptly gave the bitch a dressing down about the constitution and entrapment and banned her IP address as well as posted it to every site I could think up, just daring her ass to say anything about it!

So don't take the cops word on these things, as dealing with them myself I can tell you they'll do everything short of sending underage girls to your home trying to score busts. This one was offering tons of pics of "her" including dildo shots which I have NO DOUBT was CP they busted off someone and was using for their little "sting" as bait. It was the most blatant case of entrapment I'd ever seen, and as I said this was a place where the average post was "Sound failed need help!" or "BSOD every time I launch browser, help please!" so they HAD NO REASON to even be there. It was total bullshit and after dealing with them first hand frankly I wouldn't take a cop's word on one of these things if they said it was raining and I was ass deep in water.

Riiiight, just love the script kiddie "it didn't happen to me so I don't believe it" horsehit. First of all who the hell cares what your warez pushing botnet herding script kiddie ass thinks? Did anyone ask your opinion? Frankly it was scum like you that ruined the nice free net we had going so STFU.

Second of all the whole fucking point of the channel was to be for noobs and average Joes who were needing help with computer problems and could get that help without being charged per minute or dealing with 50 tons of spyware and drivebys like what we were dealing with during IE on Win9x being the top combo.

So we weren't herding botnets, spreading warez, playing BOFH and finding new ways to ban people or other dickish douchebag behavior like you yourself are bragging about. because we were dealing with noobs we had to deal with a lot of clueless who didn't read the fucking rules and didn't know shit, that was the whole point of the channel so why would I go though all that horseshit to cook up banlists? Before the douchebags and spammers like yourself spread like the damned clap circa 2000 we frankly didn't really have that kind of trouble so we didn't bother.

So you don't believe? Fine don't really care what a warez pusher thinks, especially one that brags about infecting the people I was trying to help and running botnets. For the rest of/. that is the way it went down, and later I found out that nearly every site connected to that IRC node ended up having a little visit from the "AZ Lolita" as we called her and those that took the bait did get popped less than a year later under a dragnet run by.....drumroll...the Scotsdale AZ PD!

So if you want to believe the cops are really nice guys that never entrap to score a quota or impress a DA? That is your business. As someone who has traveled most of the USA and had my head cracked more than once for being "A god damned hippie driving with a nigger" I know better.

This. GP showed far to much tolerance to a (apparent) idiot little girl. Definite ban, probably k-line here as well, after only three or four exchanges. No way would I engage in conversation for more than just a few minutes.